Road safety: UK set to adopt vehicle speed limiters

[editor]

What do we think of this?

Speed limiting technology looks set to become mandatory for all vehicles sold in Europe from 2022, after new rules were provisionally agreed by the EU.

The Department for Transport said the system would also apply in the UK, despite Brexit.

Campaigners welcomed the move, saying it would save thousands of lives.

Road safety charity Brake called it a "landmark day", but the AA said "a little speed" helped with overtaking or joining motorways.

Safety measures approved by the European Commission included intelligent speed assistance (ISA), advanced emergency braking and lane-keeping technology.

The EU says the plan could help avoid 140,000 serious injuries by 2038 and aims ultimately to cut road deaths to zero by 2050.

UK set to adopt vehicle speed limiters

Anything that gets speeding twats to slow down is fine with me.

 

[a_chap]

Anything that gets speeding twats to slow down is fine with me.

Unfortunately it doesn't if said twats can override the system by simply pressing the accelerator pedal

 

[mauvais]

First thing to note is it's mandatory fitment, not mandatory operation. It can be turned off, and not just by putting the pedal to the metal.

There's unlikely to be any retrofit so it's irrelevant to some for the medium term, and a disincentive to some to buy a new car.

It'll probably normalise the technology (which is unlikely to be without problems) and perhaps be part of another step change in attitudes to driving.

 

[mauvais]

Also: transport forum.

 

[editor]

Also: transport forum.

You don't think its a political issue?

 

[editor]

First thing to note is it's mandatory fitment, not mandatory operation. It can be turned off, and not just by putting the pedal to the metal.

There's unlikely to be any retrofit so it's irrelevant to some for the medium term, and a disincentive to some to buy a new car.

It'll probably normalise the technology (which is unlikely to be without problems) and perhaps be part of another step change in attitudes to driving.

But there's also a black box that will record twats being twats.

 

[mauvais]

But there's also a black box that will record twats being twats.

There's already a fair bit of stuff that can be interrogated post-accident in many (most?) new cars. I guess this makes it explicit & mandatory.

 

[mauvais]

Aaaaalso:

What do we think of this?

UK set to adopt vehicle speed limiters

Anything that gets speeding twats to slow down is fine with me.

Point (1) is bobbins, that's not how GPS works.

 

[danny la rouge]

In theory it sounds good, but there’s two road situations I drive regularly where it could prove dangerous.

My car has the speed sign recognition thing. It comes up on the dashboard. It’s useful for information, but I wouldn’t like it taking control of my brake in either of those places.

Coming back from my daughter’s flat in Glasgow, I join the M8 at the junction next to Stow College (deceased). It’s junction 17 or 18, but it’s where you join when you come from Great Western Road heading East. It’s a slip road which joins the fast lane on a stretch that has 5 or more lanes at various points. The limit here is 60. You can’t join from stopped, you have to match the speed of the lane you’re joining. And sometimes that means going faster than 60 for a short burst. To not do so would result in collisions. (I hate this slip road, and try to join from Woodlands Road if I remember). To meet the Stirling turn off, you then have to quickly cross 5 fast-moving lanes before leaving on the left. I hope whoever planned it is forced to drive it every day.

Another is on my own road at home. There’s a turn off that has a 20 mile limit, but my sign reader device always flags it as if it’s the main drag that’s gone to 20, which is actually still 30. If it put my brake on at that point, in a location at the start of a small incline, it’ll cause snarl ups. And possibly accidents if not everyone has their device turned on.

The readers are good as a source of information for the driver, but they’re often wrong. The driver does need to take responsibility.

 

[cheesethief]

This is the bit that most heartens me:

So it'll still be a free-for-all for speeding motorists then? Not quite. Under the new rules, cars will also be fitted with compulsory data recorders, or "black boxes".

So if you have an accident, the police and your insurance company will know whether you've been going too fast. If you've been keeping your foot down and routinely ignoring the car's warnings, they may take a very dim view of your actions.

So a speeding twat who's habitually speeding and then has an accident can't weasel their way out of it by claiming it was a freak accident & they're normally such a responsible driver... I reckon that will have a *way* bigger influence than anything else, drivers knowing that their regular driving style will be scrutinised when they have that definitely-not-their-fault accident.

If it was up to me, every car would be fitted with a black box and its telemetry would be regularly monitored, irrespective of whether it's been in an accident or not. Genuinely safe drivers would have nothing to fear...

 

[Smangus]

It will translate into more personalised insurance premiums for the majority of car owners, the badder the driver you are the more your insurance will cost.

 

[dessiato]

One problem is that the GPS doesn't always know on which road you are driving. Some roads are crossed by others with a different speed limit. When the system has been tested it cannot differentiate, and on the tested system caused the car to brake from 70, the motorway speed on which the car was driving, and 30, the speed on the road crossing over the motorway.

The RAC, and other organisations have tested the system and found it dreadfully inaccurate, and potentially dangerous. Let's hope it's it's fixed before roll out.

 

[skyscraper101]

Anything that gets speeding twats to slow down is fine with me.

This.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

It sounds like one of those systems that's a great idea in theory but is going to be liable to all sorts of errors.

To stop speeding needs a social change more than a technological one. Blanket 20mph limits in all residential/urban areas, greater penalties for breaking limits and a general push to give speeding as much of an antisocial stigma as drink driving now has.

What would also be nice is GPS system that limit a cars overall top speed to no more than 80mph unless it detected the car was on a track somewhere. That would be nice and easy to implement.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I'd quite like if it could be over ridden. Means you can focus totaly on the road and not look at the speedo, but if you do want to overtake quickly you still can.

 

[editor]

It sounds like one of those systems that's a great idea in theory but is going to be liable to all sorts of errors.

To stop speeding needs a social change more than a technological one. Blanket 20mph limits in all residential/urban areas, greater penalties for breaking limits and a general push to give speeding as much of an antisocial stigma as drink driving now has.

What would also be nice is GPS system that limit a cars overall top speed to no more than 80mph unless it detected the car was on a track somewhere. That would be nice and easy to implement.

Personally, I'd like tyre-shredding spikes to rise up from the ground when some reckless twat races down a 20pmh residential road at 50mph, or a trapdoor to send the car/bike into a bath of festering sewage below.

Is that really too much to ask?

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

It sounds like one of those systems that's a great idea in theory but is going to be liable to all sorts of errors.

To stop speeding needs a social change more than a technological one. Blanket 20mph limits in all residential/urban areas, greater penalties for breaking limits and a general push to give speeding as much of an antisocial stigma as drink driving now has.

What would also be nice is GPS system that limit a cars overall top speed to no more than 80mph unless it detected the car was on a track somewhere. That would be nice and easy to implement.

^^^all of this. One small change, 85mph being the max speed and up the motorway limit in fine weather to 80.

 

[Sasaferrato]

One problem is that the GPS doesn't always know on which road you are driving. Some roads are crossed by others with a different speed limit. When the system has been tested it cannot differentiate, and on the tested system caused the car to brake from 70, the motorway speed on which the car was driving, and 30, the speed on the road crossing over the motorway.

The RAC, and other organisations have tested the system and found it dreadfully inaccurate, and potentially dangerous. Let's hope it's it's fixed before roll out.

I wouldn't bet on that. More bullshit from the unelected EU Commission.

 

[likesfish]

It's like speach recognition mostly works not sure with cars almost good enough counts.

Some Japanese sports car is limited till you reach a legal racetrack then you can go as fast as you like.

 

[Cid]

You'd hope that by 2050 we'd have got round to eliminating the driver altogether.

 

[editor]

^^^all of this. One small change, 85mph being the max speed and up the motorway limit in fine weather to 80.

Why would you want to encourage cars to go even faster (and thus less efficient and more polluting)?

Avoid Speeding
Increasing your highway cruising speed from 55mph (90km/h) to 75mph (120km/h) can raise fuel consumption as much as 20%. You can improve your gas mileage 10 – 15% by driving at 55mph rather than 65mph (104km/h). Natural Resources Canada puts the “sweet spot” for most cars, trucks, and SUVs even lower, between 30 mph (50 km/h) and 50 mph (80 km/h).

Fuel Efficient Driving

Mpg For Speed - Fuel Efficiency Vs. Speed

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

^^^all of this. One small change, 85mph being the max speed and up the motorway limit in fine weather to 80.

Yeah, that seems reasonable enough.

 

[editor]

Yeah, that seems reasonable enough.

Why is increasing pollution reasonable? We should be discouraging car use.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Why would you want to encourage cars to go even faster (and thus less efficient and more polluting)?



Fuel Efficient Driving

Mpg For Speed - Fuel Efficiency Vs. Speed

A: Cos 70 is too slow for modern cars on modern motorways, increasing to 80 in fine weather has been shown in France not to affect safety.

B: Cos those figures relate to cars in the 1970's and shit has moved on since then.

 

[Sasaferrato]

I was listening to the AA CEO this morning. He has had experience of driving a car with this type of technology, he found himself on the slip road to the M1, uanble to accelerate and join the motorway. The vehicle held him to 30mph.

You do tend to find though that those firmly in favour of lunacy such as this, don't and have never driven a car.

I've been driving since I was 17, 49 years, and have driven over half a million miles. In that time I've had three accidents, two of which were over forty years ago, the other was twenty five years ago. I couldn't tell you how often I've got myself out of a potential accident by dropping two gears and flooring it, but it is in the hundreds. I was taught to drive defensively, and speed is a very important part of that, driving to the conditions, always, not the speed limit.

 

[editor]

A: Cos 70 is too slow for modern cars on modern motorways, increasing to 80 in fine weather has been shown in France not to affect safety.

A: Cos those figures relate to cars in the 1970's and shit has moved on since then.

A. Why is it a good thing to make personal car driving more attractive?
B. The figures are from this site - Save money and fuel by driving efficiently.. Here are their sources. They're not from the 1970s.

1. Thomas, J., S. Huff, B. West and P. Chambon. 2017. Fuel Consumption Sensitivity of Conventional and Hybrid Electric Light-Duty Gasoline Vehicles to Driving Style, SAE Int. J. Fuels Lubr. 10(3):2017, doi:10.4271/2017-01-9379.
2. Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 2017. Sensible driving saves more gas than drivers think.
3. Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis. ECODRIVE I-80: A Large Sample Fuel Economy Feedback Field Test
   
   (ITS-RR-13-15).
4. Estimates for the effect of speed on MPG are based on a study by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL): Predicting Light-Duty Vehicle Fuel Economy as a Function of Highway Speed, SAE 2013-01-1113.
5. Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 2014. Fuel Economy and Emissions Effects of Low Tire Pressure, Open Windows, Roof Top and Hitch-Mounted Cargo, and Trailer (SAE 2014-01-1614). Study results are based on testing with a small sedan, a standard size SUV, a single roof-top cargo box (20" H x 40" W x 50" L), and a single rear-mount cargo tray. Cargo boxes with other dimensions or shapes may have a different effect on fuel economy.
6. Based on a fuel economy improvement of 0.33% per 1% reduction in weight as estimated by Ricardo Inc., Impact of Vehicle Weight Reduction on Fuel Economy for Various Vehicle Architectures, April 2008. Our estimate assumes a vehicle weight, including cargo, of 3,200 lbs.
7. Argonne National Laboratory. 2015. Stop and Restart Effects on Modern Vehicle Starting System Components – Longevity and Economic Factors.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Yeah, that seems reasonable enough.

A lot of Germany has no speed limits on the motorway, but their level of accidents is less than ours. Of course, the Germans drive in a disciplined way, they don't pull out without signalling, and certainly don't pull out without looking. I've done a 100 miles in one hour in Germany many times, and on the run from Nuremberg to Hannover did the double, 200 miles in two hours.

ROSPA state that speed in itself is not the cause of accidents, inappropriate speed is. That can be 50mph on a motorway, if conditions are dreadful. The last bad Winter, we were nearly wiped out by a BMW that came out of the fog, doing about 80 in 30mph visibility. We were all fortunate that there was nothing in the middle lane, that he had no option but swerve into.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Why is increasing pollution reasonable? We should be discouraging car use.

We need to discourage short trip, urban car use. For all sorts of reasons using a car for a long journey is (unfortunately) still the best option for an awful lot of people.

Sort the cities out first, that's where the pollution problem lies for now.

 

[Sasaferrato]

A. Why is it a good thing to make personal car driving more attractive?
B. The figures are from this site - Save money and fuel by driving efficiently.. Here are their sources. They're not from the 1970s.

Do you have a driving licence editor ? If so, do you drive regularly?

 

[Sasaferrato]

We need to discourage short trip, urban car use. For all sorts of reasons using a car for a long journey is (unfortunately) still the best option for an awful lot of people.

Sort the cities out first, that's where the pollution problem lies for now.

We took a guest back to Oban on Monday, 120 miles, a leisurely two and a half hours. By bus, she would have left us at 09:20, and got home at 17:20.